I'm hoping you can help me with this. I've had my D50 for about a year now and love it to bits. However i keep noticing this really strange problem. As i'm learning more about photography techniques i now pay far more attention to my histogram when taking shots, in an effort to get a good exposure.

I was taking shots last night of a sunset, with straw hay bails in the foreground. I constantly checked the quality of my shots in the lcd display and was satisfied that the foreground wasn't too dark and that i could make out plenty of detail.

However when i get my photo's into CS2 Raw Editor, they are all way underexposed and dont look anything like the shots on my camera (I have autocorrect switched off on RAW Editor)

I cant understand why this happening but it is really starting to pi$$ me off. I have checked on my camera settings and have noticed that optimize image is switched on and set to Landscape. Could this be having an effect ie optimize settings being lost in the tranfer to my PC?

I've noticed that also (early on), and that's why I pay special attention to what I shoot. As in, visualize it. The camera is set to expose everything as medium gray, so if it's a bright landscape, like mid-day, expect the camera to underexpose it. So you use + compensation for it. My camera is always set to +.3 compensation as starter.

The histogram is a decent indicator, but it only read off one channel (the green, I think), so pay attention to bright blue skies. But in some cases you have to blow the sky to get detail of anything else, as dynamic range is limited. You can use grad filter, or HDR to correct this. Or capture the detail back on PP, which is why I now shoot NEF exclusively.

The LCD preview is mis-leading, as it is a JPG enclosed in the NEF file, plus it's really small, and chances are it's bright outside, and LCD is designed to be bright, so what you see is NOT what the LCD says. Also, remember than your camera sees things differently than your eyes, so you have to compensate. I've had my camera for almost six months now, and I've learned to adjust to it.